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Northern Section 2021 Awards announced

By Brynn McKiernan, AICP, April 16, 2021. Our jurors were Ozzy Arce, City of Walnut Creek; Florentina Craciun, City and County of San Francisco; Amalia Cunningham, AICP, Contra Costa County; Eri Suzuki, SiteLab; and Aaron Welch, Aaron Welch Planning. Click to see the winners.

Milpitas Metro Plan takes full advantage of transit

By Ned Thomas, AICP, and Kevin Riley, AICP, April 13, 2021. (Image: Draft Metro Plan Land Use Diagram, courtesy City…

Post-pandemic planning, Part 2: Insights from market research

By Alan Hoffman, April 15, 2021. Transit is one of the few public services that actually competes for business. People…

American cities should be more colorful

By Rachael Smith, AICP, via Next City, March 26. Swiss painter Johannes Itten (1888-1967) said, “Color is life; for a…

Northern Section News & Announcements

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BOOK REVIEW: “Brave New Home – Our Future in Smarter, Simpler, Happier Housing,” by Diana Lind

pLANNING nEWS rOUND uP

HUD report – new approach for estimating costs of homeless encampment responses

From HUD User, April 6, 2021. San Jose’s experience, along with three other U.S. cities, informed a framework that can…

Google-backed affordable home site in downtown San Jose could sprout near Shark Tank

By George Avalos, San Jose Mercury News, April 7, 2021. Google intends to donate the land to the city for…

Stocky modular buildings are popping up in East Bay – developers share their experience

By John King, San Francisco Chronicle, April 10, 2021. Sometimes the potential savings meet expectations; often, they don’t.

San Francisco Bay: Protection from costly disasters is being thrown away, scientists say

By Paul Rogers, San Jose Mercury News, April 13, 2021. Experts say that recovering dredged sediment costs less than seawalls…

Millbrae blocks housing deal that would create hundreds of apartments near SFO

By J.K. Dineen, San Francisco Chronicle, April 14, 2021. The California Department of Housing and Community Development warned that Millbrae’s…

Calif. officials announce plan to house 75% of Bay Area’s homeless population by 2024

By Jana Kadah, SFGate, April 14, 2021. The regional plan has input and organizing from the Governor’s Office, local governments,…

California may launch its own version of the Depression-era WPA

By Emily Nonko, Next City, March 25, 2021. The proposal, modeled on SF Creative Corps, would support artists and performers…

What we got wrong about Uber and Lyft

By Shira Ovide, The New York Times, March 29, 2021. A growing body of evidence suggests that on-demand ride services…

New research: urban and transport planning linked to 2,000 premature deaths per year in Barcelona and Madrid

From Barcelona Institute for Global Health, March 30, 2021. This study is the first to estimate premature mortality impacts and…

President Biden’s infrastructure spending plan could benefit big Bay Area transit projects

By Michael Cabanatuan, San Francisco Chronicle, March 31, 2021. The plan is expected to benefit California’s transit agencies and high-speed…

New urban village development threatens to displace San Jose’s 60-year-old Berryessa flea market

By Jennifer Wadsworth, San Jose Spotlight, March 31, 2021. Berryessa flea market business owners and their representatives expect the city…

The ideology hiding in SimCity’s black box – with comment from James Castañeda, AICP

By Clayton Ashley, Polygon, April 1, 2021. The game was inspired by a book suggesting that social policies meant to…

Northern News May 2021